Good to point you in the right direction.

Requirements

If the selected language is Javascript, you need to install Node.js . No server needed at all.

The same is true for PHP or Python or whatever. No need for apache, just lang int.

Running script with node

Create file.js

somewhere. To run it, you just need to type (in the console) node file.js

(in the directory where the file is located.

Getting onfo from REC web service

Here's an example of a GET request:

var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');
var options = {
    host: 'rec-registry.gov.au',
    port: 443,
    path: '/rec-registry/app/api/public-register/certificate-actions?date=2015-06-03'
};
var jsonstr = '';

var request = https.get(options, function(response) {
  process.stdout.write("downloading data...");
  response.on('data', function (chunk) {
    process.stdout.write(".");
    jsonstr += chunk;
  });

  response.on('end', function () {
    process.stdout.write("DONE!");
    console.log(' ');
    console.log('Writing to file...');
    fs.writeFile("data.json", jsonstr, function(err) {
      if(err) {
        return console.error('Error saving file'); 
      }
    console.log('The file was saved!');
    });
  });
})

request.on('error', function(e) {
  console.log('Error downloading file: ' + e.message);
});

      

        
        
        
      

    

Convert json string to object / array

use JSON.parse

Data parsing

explore todaysRecords to find any matching criteria within the framework

Can't help you there, but it should be relatively easy to look for the correct object properties.

NOTE. Basically, what you get from a query is a string. Then you parse that line with

var foo = JSON.parse(jsonstr)

      

        
        
        
      

    

In this case, it foo

is an object. The "certificates" results are actually inside a property result

, which is an array

var results = foo.result;

      

        
        
        
      

    

In this example, the array contains about 1700 entries, and the certificate structure looks something like this:

"actionType": "STC created",
"completedTime": "2015-06-02T21:51:26.955Z",
"certificateRanges": [{
  "certificateType": "STC",
  "registeredPersonNumber": 10894,
  "accreditationCode": "PVD2259359",
  "generationYear": 2015,
  "generationState": "QLD",
  "startSerialNumber": 1,
  "endSerialNumber": 72,
  "fuelSource": "S.G.U. - solar (deemed)",
  "ownerAccount": "Solargain PV Pty Ltd",
  "ownerAccountId": 25782,
  "status": "Pending audit"
}]

      

        
        
        
      

    

So, to access, for example, the "ownerAccount" from the first "certificates" for the first "certificate" you would do:

var results = JSON.parse(jsonstr).result;

var ownerAccount = results[0].certificateRanges[0].ownerAccount;

      

        
        
        
      

    

Generating csv

The best way is to create an abstract structure (which suits your needs) and convert it to csv.

There's a nice npm library called json2csv that can help you out there

Example:

var fs = require('fs');
var json2csv = require('json2csv'); 
var fields = ['car', 'price', 'color']; // csv titles
var myCars = [
  {
    "car": "Audi",
    "price": 40000,
    "color": "blue"
  }, {
    "car": "BMW",
    "price": 35000,
    "color": "black"
  }, {
    "car": "Porsche",
    "price": 60000,
    "color": "green"
  }
];

json2csv({ data: myCars, fields: fields }, function(err, csv) {
  if (err) console.log(err);
  fs.writeFile('file.csv', csv, function(err) {
    if (err) throw err;
    console.log('file saved');
  });
});

      

        
        
        
      

    

If you want to add instead of writing to a new file, you can use

fs.appendFile('file.csv', csv, function (err) { });